


Parousia

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gore, M/M, Tim trying to be noble, Torture, Vengeful Jack, Violence, or you will pay a thousand times over, poor Tim, you don't hurt his lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 18:53:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8172268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: Against Jack's wishes, Tim decides to give his life up in exchange for Rhys'. But Jack has never been willing to let go of things that he deems his.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Started off as a song request on Tumblr, and involved into some Jackothy/Rhackothy angst that I enjoyed writing. So I hope that you enjoy reading it!

“Tim, you _can’t_.” 

Tim’s face was wavering slightly as Jack looked at him with horror and disbelief, but his resolve held firm. He shook his head at Jack as he holstered his gun. 

“I have to, Jack….they have Rhys….they’re not going to let him go unless they get Handsome Jack’s head.” Jack growled, catching Tim’s chin in hand and pulling him close.

“Bullshit…I can do it, I can track ‘em down. Once we find them I’ll send an army of Loaders to wipe them off the face of the earth and get him back. I just need time.”

“He doesn’t have time, Jack…” Tim whispered softly, eyes begging Jack to _understand_. “You saw the latest video they sent…he’s _dying._ They’re killing him. I can’t…I can’t let that happen, and I can’t let _you_ go.”

Tim’s unshakeable resolve did waver, ever so slightly, when Jack pulled him in for a possessive, firm kiss–like the CEO had something to prove, something he needed Tim to understand through the close press of their lips. And even with Tim’s mind made up, Jack made a convincing case. 

“You can’t die, Tim. You can’t.” Jack stroked softly over Tim’s chin as warm tears sprung up in the double’s eye. His fingers stroked over Jack’s, weaving in between the CEO’s own to wind their hands together. 

“Oh, Jack…” Tim sighed, pressing their entwined hands against the side of his face. 

“Timothy Lawrence has been dead for a long time.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hurt me for this

Tim had prayed his death would be cruel and quick.

He had been ready for it. The final nail in his resolve hits when Rhys’ is brought to the rendezvous point. The young man looks like hell, covered in blood and torn to pieces. He holds his shaking fingers under the young man’s nose, hand on his gun until the barest breath graces his skin. He nods, and Rhys is transferred to the Loader who will return to the Hyperion base. Tim faces the bandits and takes a breath. He’s surprised how willingly he lays down his gun, how the absence of the weight makes him feel like his feet are lifting off the ground.

Timothy Lawrence is ready to die, up until the moment he reaches the bandit camp.

(After years and years and years, he thought he knew what it meant to wear Jack’s face.)

He’s stripped completely of his clothing, pieces of cloth torn from his body and leaving harsh red burn marks against his skin. Jeers and cheers rock through his brain as stones and debris scar against his body before he even reaches the two jagged pieces of wood where they bind him hand and foot and beat him. He breaths only blood and broken teeth, eye already swollen shut from the butt of a gun crushed against his brow. The mask is ripped from his face and smashed under a boot as the leader of the compound spits on what he sees underneath.

The bonds are tight around his wrists, so tight that Tim can no longer feel his fingers even when his nails are hammered out of their beds and spat upon the ground as the bandits laugh and crow and tear Handsome Jack apart.

Tim tries to hold up the charade, tries to bark and vow revenge and swear against the crowd of bandits as they rip his pride from his shaking body, but slowly he falters, tirades fading into pained whimpers and desperate sobbing. And the men who think they’ve broken Handsome Jack have no idea they’ve merely brought Timothy Lawrence to the surface—shaken, scared, sobbing.

Tim knows every lash against his back, every cut into his skin, every cruel laugh is because of Jack—the man’s bloody onslaught against Pandora now rebounded against his doppleganger and scarred into his skin. In the hot delirium swimming under the burning sky Tim spits a swear against the man he loves, the man responsible for every last hateful act reflected in the yawning welts of his body. He barely suppresses a scream of Jack’s name when they stab him in the side and rip his flesh down to the hip.

His wounds are left to bake under the hot sun, and through one eye crusted in blood and flayed skin he raises his head up and he can see Helios, blurry and brilliant against Elpis. His head hangs in the balance, torn lips trembling as he tries to say something, anything—a goodbye, a prayer—but it falls from his mouth in a stream of blood as his world goes dark.

* * *

Jack gets Rhys back.

The kid is a broken, bloody mess. His clothing is torn to pieces, arm mangled and ECHOeye slashed out. He doesn’t wake up when the doctor finish bandaging his wounds. He doesn’t wake up when he’s resting in the hospital hooked up to a dozen different machines, and he doesn’t wake up when Jack roars in his face, begs in his face, cries in his face.

Later, Jack will hate himself in those moments of weakness where he wonders if _this_ was worth it.

When he’s told they’ve tracked down the camp where Tim was taken, Jack takes a long sip of his coffee. It’s poorly made and soured in the hours it’s been sitting on his desk. It reminds him of the little things that never seemed so important, but now ache like holes in his skin.

Jack kisses Rhys before he leaves, and the lukewarm press of the man’s lips still lingers over his tongue when his army eclipses the bandit camp.

A hell of bullets follows with him, cracking the earth and blotting the sun with the stink of torched flesh, the earth stamped with vaporized blood as Jack’s grief and pain streaks the sand with smothered death. The bandits still alive when Jack himself storms into the compound shriek and shit themselves like they’ve seen a ghost, a blood-soaked specter of violence with the fatty taste of blistering corpse on his lips as he executes them down to the man, their bodies evaporating into smoke as the compound burns alive.

His mask is streaked in blood and ash, pale overlaid with red and black, bravado melting in the heat of the flames as he stamps through the gore and parts the bodies, searching madly until he comes across the figure bound and limp against the now-broken wooden stakes.

The bloodied binds are so tight they’ve cut his wrists and ankles down to the bone, bled-white flesh chafing around the cruel ropes. Jack tears them apart, eases the body down. His skin is covered in blood, impossibly torn apart with only small strips of the familiar warm brown flesh still unstained. Jack trembles, angry swears and sobs shaking on his lips, and still he says nothing as he raises a hand to his lover’s still face.  

There is life among the twisted corpses, among the creaking Loaders, among the burning ground, and it comes in the smallest breeze of Timothy Lawrence’s breath against Jack’s fingers.

* * *

Tim is placed in the same room as Rhys once the man is stabilized. Jack wants them both together, both kept under the careful aegis of his watch. He doesn’t want to sleep, too afraid that if he lets up for even a moment, one or both of them may slip away.

Rhys wakes up first—single, deep brown eye fluttering at Jack just a moment before it wells up in tears of relief. He clings to Jack weakly with one arm, body trembling as he sobs into Jack’s chest. The nerves in his body shake in memory of the torture, and he apologizes far too much, but it barely bothers Jack through the rush of gratitude and emotion that comes over him.

They take Tim home as soon as Rhys is healthy enough to move. Jack wants him to wake up somewhere comfortable, and even if the soft beeps of the machines keep him up at night, he thinks it’s worth it.

And it definitely is—all of it, all of it is worth it, every last burnt body and drop of blood and anguished cry and nights spent waiting and watching and sobbing—it is all worth it, the moment that Tim’s eyes flutter open again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Considering writing a third chapter with fluff between the three of them? Would people be interested?


End file.
